Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Taiwan's opposition leader Cheng Li-wun in Beijing

Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday said peace is the common wish of the people of both sides as he met Taiwan's opposition leader Cheng Li-wun in Beijing ahead of US President Donald Trump's visit to China next month.

Cheng is the first Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson to visit China in a decade amid Beijing’s efforts to ramp up military and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan to reintegrate with the mainland.

China claims Taiwan as part of it and pledges to reunite it with the mainland.

Meeting Cheng in Beijing, Xi said, “compatriots on both sides are both Chinese, and we need peace, we need development, we need communication, and we need cooperation. This is a common wish.” He expressed full confidence that people across the Taiwan Strait would ultimately get closer and get together.

“The historical trend that compatriots of both sides of the strait will get closer and get together will not change, this is a certainty of history, and we are fully confident,” Xi said in the beginning of his meeting with Cheng, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

  Their meeting marked the first time a sitting KMT chairperson had met with the Communist Party leadership since November 2016, when then-KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu visited the mainland.

Her meeting with Xi is being closely watched around the world as the Chinese leader stepped up efforts to reunify Taiwan, strictly enforcing its One-China policy since he took over in 2012, giving high military and diplomatic priority to it.

Cheng's visit is also regarded as significant as it comes ahead of US President Donald Trump's trip to Beijing on May 14-15, during which Taiwan is expected to figure prominently in his talks with Xi, considering Washington's plans to sell a USD 11 billion arms sales package, the biggest so far by the US to Taipei.  China calls Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) separatists and tacitly backs the pro-Beijing KMT as it advocates close ties with the mainland.

DPP firmly opposes China's attempts to reunify Taiwan with the mainland and advocates for the breakaway island to retain its identity.

In her meeting with Xi, Cheng said that both sides “should transcend political confrontation and jointly plan and build a win-win, mutually beneficial community of shared future across the Taiwan Strait”.

“And we should seek a systemic solution to prevent and avoid war, making the Taiwan Strait a model for peaceful conflict resolution worldwide,” she added.

“Both sides should further plan and build a systemic and sustainable dialogue and cooperation mechanism to make the peace of cross-strait relations irreversible and fundamentally eliminate all causes of conflict”, she said.

Trump’s plans to sell a USD 11 billion arms sales package, the biggest so far by the US to Taipei.

The deal includes HIMARS rocket systems, anti-tank missiles, anti-armour missiles, loitering suicide drones, howitzers, military software and parts for other equipment.

China said it firmly opposes and strongly condemns the US arms sales package.

But the Taiwanese government struggled to get this year's defence budget passed by the parliament to avail the US package, as it was stalled by the opposition-dominated parliament.

Last week, a bipartisan US delegation visited Taipei to urge parliament to pass a USD 40 billion special defence spending budget.

Cheng has described her six-day trip, which began on Tuesday in Shanghai, as a “journey of peace”. During her visits to Shanghai and Nanjing, she repeatedly emphasised cross-strait peace.

Her visit comes at a time of heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait, with the People’s Liberation Army manoeuvring around the island almost daily, aimed at deterring the ruling independence-leaning DPP.   Ahead of her visit, Cheng told the media in Taipei earlier that her visit is in line with the mainstream public opinion in Taiwan. "We have a choice," she said. "For the sake of both sides of the Taiwan Strait, for regional stability, and for the well-being of the next generation, we must firmly choose the path of peace." She said that her visit, like previous visits to the mainland by former KMT chairmen Lien Chan and Ma Ying-jeou, is on the basis of the same political foundation -- adherence to the 1992 Consensus, which embodies the one-China principle, and opposition to "Taiwan independence."